The Stambol Gate was the main gate of Belgrade on the
Tsarigrad Road to
Constantinople (present-day
Istanbul), hence the derivation of the
Serbian name (
Stambol is the Serbian
name for Istanbul). In the 18th and 19th centuries, Belgrade stretched between the rivers
Sava and
Danube and was protected by a deep
ditch and
palisades. Located in front of
Kalemegdan, the actual city of Belgrade, it included the present-day
urban neighbourhoods of
Savski Venac,
Stari grad and
Dorćol. The Stambol Gate stood on the square in front of the present-day
National Theatre, near the present
monument to Prince
Mihailo Obrenović on the present
Republic Square in the city centre. Of all the gates of the
city wall, the Stambol Gate was the best
fortified. The gate was built by the
Austrians during the
occupation from 1718 to 1739 and was originally called the Württemberg Gate after the governor
Charles Alexander of
Württemberg. It stood in front of a simple green area where two paths forked to the
Terazije and
Tašmajdan. Since rebellious Serbs were
publicly impaled on the stakes at the Stambol Gate during the
Ottoman rule, this gate was so hated that it was demolished in April–May 1866 by decree of Prince Mihailo. The gate had three entrances, of which the middle one was the largest and was passable for carts. When
Ernst Gideon von Laudon captured Belgrade for the Austrians in 1789, he removed the plaque of Sultan
Mehmed I that was there and brought it to
Vienna, where it still adorns his grave in the
Vienna Woods today, along with other military plaques. In 1806, during the
capture of Belgrade by the
Serbian revolutionaries in the
First Serbian Uprising,
Vasa Čarapić, one of the leaders of the uprising, died at the Stambol Gate. In memory of this, there is a
monument on the spot where he died and
one of the surrounding streets bears his name. == See also ==